


The Hazards of Teamwork

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2016 [9]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Awkward Turtle Peter Quill, Awkwardness, Buffy Insert, Fusion, Gen, Graphic Description, Not Bet Read, Prompt Fic, Team Dynamics, Violence, Wishlist_Fic, and Stuffs, and injuries, of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 03:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8828803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: In which Peter isn't dying today. No, sir!(Wishlist, Day 9)





	

**Author's Note:**

> For Reena_Jenkins, the ever lovely, who asked for more in this verse, along with the quote "I would die for you, but not right now!". Please accept my humble offering to your awesomeness. And while we're at it, expect mail.

+

Peter is running for his life.

That is not new. 

The fact that Groot, riding on Rocket’s shoulder, Rocket, riding on Drax’ shoulder, and Drax on his own two feet are right ahead of him and Buffy is keeping pace, while Faith is heading the same way two floors above?

That is new. 

Usually, Peter’s on his own when he’s running for his life. 

Either that, or he’s with other Ravagers, which pretty much means last one to the ship gets left to the dogs. It’s like that old Earth joke. You don’t have to run faster than the bear. You just have to run faster than the guy with you.

Having people actually keep pace with him while he’s running away from a bunch of angry people with full loaded weapons is kind of nice. 

Except for the shooting part. That’s not fun at all. 

“Really, really not fun!” He hollers over the sound of someone’s shoddy aim taking out some sort of pipe, which explodes overhead and showers them all with goo. Orange goo.

“Shut up and run!” Buffy orders, actually taking the time to grab him by the shoulder and propel him forward a few steps. 

Above them, through the grated flooring, Peter can hear Faith cackling. 

“Why the hell is she here anyway?” he demands, ducking a slightly-better-aimed shot and taking a tight turn. Ahead, hanging over Drax’s shoulder, Rocket is cursing up a storm and firing at their followers. 

Cutting it a bit close, too. 

“Hey! Watch it! I like my hair!” 

“Screw you!” Rocket keeps right on firing. Above them, something creaks and cracks and, yep, that’s Faith bringing down the ceiling on someone. 

“No, seriously,” Peter gets back on topic, ducking, weaving, and trying not to get in Rocket’s way, “why is she here?”

“Adam,” Buffy answers, and god, he hates her for not even being out of breath. 

Oh, yeah. 

Adam. 

Who got away, _again_ , but not before setting about five-hundred-seventy-six nasty goon babies on them. 

One of which suddenly discovers an hitherto unknown ability to _aim_ , ending with a sharp burning pain in Peter’s left arm, which, yep, definitely more than a graze. Shit. 

He puts on a burst of speed, managing to outstrip Buffy for a beat before she catches up and they explode into the main hangar. 

Wide open space.

Fuck his life. 

Faith is still above them, racing along a catwalk. Drax and his hangers-on have managed to get some sort of cart going, providing a bit of cover. But the thing is already overtaxed with the big blue guy. No chance of anyone else fitting in there. 

Which leaves Peter and Buffy to cross the wide, wide open space on foot, with barely any cover. 

Barely, because a certain former assassin grabs his injured arm and hauls him into a sharp turn, toward a small pile of junk, which, he guesses, is better than getting flat-out shot in the back. 

“Faith!” Buffy screams.

The blue woman spins herself around without losing speed and fires off half a dozen shots at their pursuers before her gun clicks empty. With a screech that sounds a bit too much like laughter for Peter’s peace of mind, she slings the gun at the goons, too, then goes back to fleeing for her life with a cackle of glee. 

“Bitch.”

“Oh, shut up,” Buffy chides as they skid behind the junk pile, half landing on top of each other. 

A couple of shots blow up something in the pile and it catches merrily on fire. Another shot comes close enough that Peter smells singed hair. 

“Fuck,” he calls as Buffy twists sideways to return fire and promptly takes one in the shoulder. She pulls back, biting her lip to keep in a scream of pain. In the junk pile something else blows up and the fire burns higher. 

“You know,” Peter remarks, conversationally, as he drags her further under cover, using up his last few shots while he goes, “I’d totally die for you and everything, but not right now! I’m not dying in a pile of crap on some shitty space station just because your big brother is a goddamn idiot who refuses to die!”

Buffy whacks him on the arm, pulls a knife out of nowhere and kills a guy sneaking up on them from the side. 

Then, before they, you know, die gruesomely, something slams into their little junk haven with a cry of victory and yep, that’s Rocket, clinging to the little cart’s steering wheel, manic grin on his little rat’s face. 

“Stop lying around, useless humies! Get the hell in!”

Peter hauls Buffy in head-first, flings himself after and presses a spare foot down on the gas pedal before Rocket can try reaching with his stubby, furred legs.

Here’s to not dying today. 

+

Having holes in your body hurts. 

Every time. 

Ouch.

“Oh, stop being a pussy,” Faith snaps from where she’s patching up her own holes with a callous disregard for, well, her own ouchies. 

Peter, pressing down on his arm wound, takes time out of watching Rocket stitch up Buffy to glare at her. He’s still not sure why they aren’t shooting her. 

Oh, yeah. Adam, Thanos and the whole trying to murder them all shtick. 

He must have said some of that out loud, because she snorts, rolling her eyes. Then, slapping on a final antiseptic seal, she stands, grabbing her ruined jacket and leans around Buffy and Rocket to holler toward the front of the ship, “Drop me off at my ship, big guy, I’m heading out!”

“Dropping you from this height would certainly result in your death!” Drax shouts back.

“Figure of speech!!” Everyone choruses. Even Faith. She might have been spending too much time around them. 

“Ah! Then I shall endeavor to bring you where you wish to go!”

“Thanks!”

“Stop shouting,” Buffy complains, apparently awake, batting at Rocket’s paws in her face.

Faith runs a hand through her dark hair, flicking it over a blue shoulder to lean down and press her forehead against her sister’s, upside down. 

“You don’t get to die, B,” she tells her, harshly, before smacking a kiss to her cheek and clanking down the stairs toward the back hatch without another word.

“Bye, have a great day, come back soon,” Peter grumbles. “Or not.”

Buffy kicks one foot vaguely in his direction before Groot, almost as tall as Peter’s forearm these days, smacks her in the ear and squeaks scoldingly. 

She folds like a wet tissue and Rocket goes back to his tender ministrations while their resident sentient tree abseils from the table slash operating room and scrambles toward Peter, grabbing a few seals from their med kit on the way. He hops up onto the Ravager’s knee and nudges his hands aside and starts fixing Peter up, despite the fact that he’s tiny.

Buffy watches, biting back a grin, or maybe a grimace. Eventually, their tiniest crew members are done and Rocket, still muttering about human idiocy, packs up the kit and Groot and stomps out. Which is pretty impressive, for a walking rodent. His paws are tiny. 

It does leave Peter alone with Buffy, though, which is usually cool, but she’s got that look. The one that means the knives might be coming out.

She sits up.

“Should you be doing that?”

She glares.

“No, seriously.” There’s blood all over her shirt, holes in it (and her!), and her prosthetic arm is sparking. Again. Also, the skin above one of her cheek grafts is scraped raw, leaving the glimmer of metal below visible. He’s seen it before, but it still sends a shiver down his spine every time. 

“You said-“

“No, seriously, I mean it, you got shot, like, seventeen times.”

“Three,” she counters without missing a beat and, well, yeah, he knows, but, “You said -“

“At least four! I watched Rocket patch you up!”

“You said you would – “

“Buffy! I was under pressure! There were people trying to kill me!”

She cocks her head to one side, stopping her incessant barrage to ask, “So you didn’t mean it.”

Except it’s not really a question and damn it, Peter _knows_ what she’s doing here, but it’s Buffy, pink hair and metal parts and blood all over and he can never quite – 

“I did. You know I did.” He raises his hand to rub at his forehead, winces at the strain it puts on his ouchies and drops it, which hurts, too.

She nods in that distant, birdlike way she sometimes gets, utterly remote. “Don’t,” she finally tells him.

“Don’t what.”

“Die,” she answers. Doesn’t say _for me_. It’s implied though, loud enough for even Peter to hear, even though he’s not the most observant. 

“Not really up to you,” he tells her, as flippant as he can, which isn’t much right now. “Also probably not up to me. People keep shooting at me for some reason, you know?”

Eyebrow of Doom. 

He grins all his teeth at her.

The other eyebrow goes up, too. 

“Buffy,” he says, finally, sighing, because he’s not getting out of this. “Look, I… we’re a team, okay? That means we stick together. And if shit happens, it happens. And if it means – “

There’s a snort behind him, of the rodent variety, just as he loses his thread. 

“Shut up, Rocket!”

“You’re pathetic at this.”

“I concur!” Drax booms. 

“I hate you all!”

Buffy’s lips twitch. “No, you don’t.”

No, he doesn’t. Goddamn them all. 

Groot, apparently done with pretending to not be there, stumbles over and chitters at Buffy until she picks him up and places him in her lap. Rocket just slouches in after him, leaning casually against the wall. 

“Are you two done having your little moment? I’m hungry.”

Yeah. Moment definitely over. 

+

“Peter?”

Rousing just enough to realize someone’s talking to him, Peter blinks blearily at the assassin looming over his bed.

“Yeah?”

“Me, too.”

+

**Author's Note:**

> Come tumble with me [here](http://www.wordsformurder.tumblr.com/).


End file.
